Me last night..... first hair cut in 3 1/2 months, no shaving since late September.
Visited a beautiful rose garden a few days ago.... the willow tree is actually 3 willows but looks like one massive tree.
This is the grime my hat has accumulated since September 4th!
This is the Daddy-Mack of all traveling caravans, buses, spaceships, etc. Saw this one on a side street and new I'd found a gem!
What's up Peoples..... Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
I hope you all are doing well and enjoying all the good soul food that's getting thrown down the hatch right about now. New Zealand has been great thus far. It's a pretty expensive place but very friendly for the most part. It reminds me quite a bit of home from a cultural standpoint but not so much from a topographic one.
I have found in the two months or so of being here that Americans apparently stand out from other people. On more than one occassion people have walked up to me and just asked "Your American aren't you?" or simply "What part of the States you from?" without me even opening my mouth. I've also found, as expected, that we as Americans are stereotyped and looked down upon due to our current government, especially the President. Several different times people have explained that from their expectations they assumed Americans would be arrogant and selfish. This is a bit dissapointing but I must also add that Ryan, Nate, and myself have definitely changed a lot of peoples viewpoints towards Americans. I would say that we've been excellent ambassadors for our country thus far. We have heard numerous times by Kiwis (NZanders) that they are so pleased to hear how polite we are. Of course we have been saying "yes maam"/"no maam," "please" and "thank you," and "have a good day," etc. Just the things that seem to be the norm from good southern gentlemen and women. Apparently the younger generation of kiwis and even other travelers do not use the same etiquette we're used to. We've even been told by people who are in contact with lots of the tourists that Americans are by far the most polite people they encounter day to day. You can be proud that North Carolina and the United States has been represented well!
As of what we are up to these days.... Ryan has moved on to Thailand a bit early to get in some climbing and to submerse himself into the Asian culture and lifestyle a bit more. Nate and I are currently in Blenheim, a town on the NorthEastern corner of the Southern Island in New Zealand. We've been here for two weeks and will be here another week. We are currently working at various vineyards for a contractor doing bud-rubbing (taking growth off lower part of vines), chute-thinning (taking out double jointed chutes on vines), and wire-pulling (wires keep the vines growing up instead of out). Considering how inexpensive Asia is, we are making about 2 - 2 1/2 weeks worth of living there for each 1 week of work here in NZ. We're hanging out with all kinds of different of people. There are Scots, Israelis, Kiwis, French, Japanese, Americans, and several Germans.
We have encountered many more Germans than any other nationality of travelers. I would estimate that around 35% - 40% of all the people we see traveling are Germans. It's crazy!!!! At any given moment you can go to a hostel and see at least 5-6 sometimes 10-15 Germans staying there.
Kind of random skipping around here. A few stories:
First I guess comes the story of me getting jumped on at a bar by some ugly Kiwi.
So I was at bar/club listening to a live band and dancing with this girl from Wellington for 30-45 minutes who was with a friend and had given me every reason to believe she was single, etc. All of a sudden some guy pushes the crap out of me from behind and sends me flying and sliding across the floor. When I get to my feet (rather quickly) there's a guy coming at me letting loose this massive right hand haymaker. He had just started swinging thank the Lord and he obviously didn't know how to throw a punch since his arm was fully extended taking the long way around to my face. Before I could really comprehend what was happening I had a guy swinging at me so I did what most people would do, defend themselves. While this guy was taking a massively slow swing at me I took the opportunity to throw and land the first complete punch. I jabbed with a left and threw an overhand right to the eye area. I knew I didn't want to actually get into a drag-out fight in a foreign bar so I followed it with another left and a big right to put him down that apparently connected with his mouth/teeth because my right hand got really mangled and cut up in the dilemma. At this point the bouncer comes rushing in and grabs me takes me outside. The police talk to me for about 5-10 minutes, I tell them what happened, the bouncer then confirms my story to be true... that I hadn't done anything at all but defend myself and then the cops let me go and told me to be careful. I'm not sure what exactly I did, whether this guy had a crush on the girl, was an Ex, or just wanted to mess with an American tourist. There actually had been quite a bit of random attacks from teenagers within the area recently. Either way, I somehow ended up on the giving end rather than the receiving end. At this point within a week roughly between us we had been arrested and spent a night in jail and in a bar fight that if happened at home would have sent two of us to jail in one week. New Zealand is an awesome place right? Kiwis celebrate Guy Fawke's Day on November 5th and have a huge fireworks show. This guy is the guy the movie V for Vandetta was based on except the authorities actually stopped the train that really did have tons of explosives on it before it was sent crashing into Parliament in London. It was possibly the best fireworks show I've ever seen in large part to the actual noise of the whole thing. When the fireworks went BOOM it sounded like bombs or canons going off. The event took place over Wellington Harbor and featured two boats shooting off symmetrical fireworks that were quite intricate. It was pretty awesome!
Couple days later Nate and I took the Ferry from Wellington (North Island) to Picton (South Island). Picton is located in the Queen Charlotte Sound which is amazingly beautful. There's a trail that runs up the side of a hill/mountain that you can walk to get a great vantage point of the whole harbor and sound. This story is of the probably the dumbest thing I've done to date on this trip. So Nate and I went walking up to the lookout over the sound and on the way up I decided to take the direct route that was directly straight up the side of this mountain (like 45 degrees, don't look down) I figured it would eventually hit the next switchback that had been occurring and I'd meet back up with Nate. Luckily for me we had already passed the last switchback. I couldn't really go back down the way I'd just gone up because it was too steep to do anything other than slide on my butt really fast and out of control and besides, I could look and see the top I thought. So I just said to heck with it, I'll keep going until I reach the top and I'll have my own lookout. Needless to say, everytime I thought I was close to the top it seemed to be the same distance away as the last time I stopped to catch my breath. So I ascended probably 400-500 vertical feet scaling this mountain grabbing trees and roots one at a time. It was to the point that if the root or tree that I grabbed (I did choose these very carefully) would have broken I'd have been TOAST!! Eventually I did make it to the top, enjoyed the nice view for a bit and then had to come back down. It was OK at first cause I found the ridge and hit that. I had been completely and utterly by myself since I'd left the trail about an hour prior. I went a ways down the ridge because the slope was much easier than the way I'd come up. Then I found a stream and knew I could follow that until the bottom.
So the way down was crazy!!!! There were several hundred instances of "HOLY MOLY, if I lose my footing here I'm up shit creek without a paddle!" At one point I ended up having to pull a Man vs. Wild and climb down a 20-25 ft. rock face/waterfall with nothing but vines to hold on to. By this point I had figured out which plants were cool to grab and which weren't. There were lots of semi-controlled slides, and several broken tree limbs and stuff that caused a couple uncontrolled slides. I eventually made it down to the bottom, messed up my pinke which was healing from the fight about 4 days earlier, but didn't break any bones which was pretty amazing considering the severity of the descent I had just done. Got back down the van which was at the very bottom of this F'n hill that I later found out was 487 meters tall!!!! By far the dumbest and craziest thing I have done on this trip. 1,200 feet down a mountain is much easier on a snowboard than in the hellacious bush of New Zealand!
This pic is of the sound I was climbing to look at, taken by Nate from the vantage point I originally set out for.
New Zealand's funky foods!!!! Nate and I ran into both of these intriguing foods on the same isle!
Couple days later Nate and I took the Ferry from Wellington (North Island) to Picton (South Island). Picton is located in the Queen Charlotte Sound which is amazingly beautful. There's a trail that runs up the side of a hill/mountain that you can walk to get a great vantage point of the whole harbor and sound. This story is of the probably the dumbest thing I've done to date on this trip. So Nate and I went walking up to the lookout over the sound and on the way up I decided to take the direct route that was directly straight up the side of this mountain (like 45 degrees, don't look down) I figured it would eventually hit the next switchback that had been occurring and I'd meet back up with Nate. Luckily for me we had already passed the last switchback. I couldn't really go back down the way I'd just gone up because it was too steep to do anything other than slide on my butt really fast and out of control and besides, I could look and see the top I thought. So I just said to heck with it, I'll keep going until I reach the top and I'll have my own lookout. Needless to say, everytime I thought I was close to the top it seemed to be the same distance away as the last time I stopped to catch my breath. So I ascended probably 400-500 vertical feet scaling this mountain grabbing trees and roots one at a time. It was to the point that if the root or tree that I grabbed (I did choose these very carefully) would have broken I'd have been TOAST!! Eventually I did make it to the top, enjoyed the nice view for a bit and then had to come back down. It was OK at first cause I found the ridge and hit that. I had been completely and utterly by myself since I'd left the trail about an hour prior. I went a ways down the ridge because the slope was much easier than the way I'd come up. Then I found a stream and knew I could follow that until the bottom.
So the way down was crazy!!!! There were several hundred instances of "HOLY MOLY, if I lose my footing here I'm up shit creek without a paddle!" At one point I ended up having to pull a Man vs. Wild and climb down a 20-25 ft. rock face/waterfall with nothing but vines to hold on to. By this point I had figured out which plants were cool to grab and which weren't. There were lots of semi-controlled slides, and several broken tree limbs and stuff that caused a couple uncontrolled slides. I eventually made it down to the bottom, messed up my pinke which was healing from the fight about 4 days earlier, but didn't break any bones which was pretty amazing considering the severity of the descent I had just done. Got back down the van which was at the very bottom of this F'n hill that I later found out was 487 meters tall!!!! By far the dumbest and craziest thing I have done on this trip. 1,200 feet down a mountain is much easier on a snowboard than in the hellacious bush of New Zealand!
This pic is of the sound I was climbing to look at, taken by Nate from the vantage point I originally set out for.
New Zealand's funky foods!!!! Nate and I ran into both of these intriguing foods on the same isle!
Hope everyone's doing well. Life's great my way, make it great yours too!!!!
